Charles immediately introduced unpopular policies. He started in 1626 by imposing a ‘forced loan’ on the nobility to pay for a war against France. He imprisoned anyone who refused to pay, like Oliver St John, 1st Earl of Bolingbroke, and Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford. Theophilus Clinton, 4th Earl of Lincoln, was then imprisoned in the Tower after circulating a pamphlet accusing the king of trying to overthrow parliament. Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, and William Seymour, 2nd Earl of Hertford, were just two of many who supported the Petition of Right to curb the king’s powers in 1628.
Charles supported George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, the only man from James’s court who kept his position. But Villiers was blamed when he could not to recover the Electorate of the Palatinate and for failing to capture the Spanish port of Cádiz in 1625. He then failed to intercept a fleet carrying a huge amount of silver from the New World to Spain.
Villiers also negotiated a deal in which English ships would fight the Huguenots and Parliament was horrified that English Protestants were fighting French Protestants. He would see his army defeated when they tried to help French Protestants at the siege of La Rochelle in 1627. James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, called for peace with Spain and a new war with France when the siege failed but his advice was ignored so he withdrew from public life.
Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, headed the faction opposing Villiers in the House of Lords and the king had to intervene to stop parliament prosecuting him on two occasions. Public opinion took a hand in matters when the mob murdered his advisor Doctor Lambe. Villiers was stabbed to death in a Portsmouth pub in August 1628 by John Felton, an army officer, and the public applauded his actions. Villiers’ son would be raised in the royal household alongside the princes Charles and James.
William Knollys was created Earl of Banbury in 1626 and he remarried even though he was aged 82. His wife had two children but the House of Lords doubted their legitimacy and refused to let them keep the earldom.
Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, chose to marry Anne, daughter of William Cecil, 2nd Earl of Salisbury, in 1629 against his father’s wishes. Henry Percy blamed William for his seventeen-year imprisonment in the Tower following the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and warned that ‘the blood of a Percy would not mix with the blood of a Cecil if you poured it on a dish.’
There was a scandal when Emanuel Scrope, 1st Earl of Sunderland, died in 1630. His four children had all died young so he left his estates to the illegitimate children he had had with his maid Martha, rather than his legitimate relatives.
Charles opened the second session of Parliament in January 1629 but there was opposition to his taxation policies. He soon wanted an adjournment but the members pinned the speaker in his chair until their resolutions had been read out. Charles had nine parliamentary leaders arrested and dissolved Parliament. He then ruled for eleven years without recalling it, in a period known as the ‘Personal Rule’ or the ‘Tyranny’. Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, headed the royal advisors, called the Thorough Party, but only parliament had the legal right to raise taxes. It left the treasury short of money and Charles had to make peace with France and Spain.
The Scottish Covenanters opposed the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer into Scotland in 1637. George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, supported an alliance with the Scottish Presbyterians and accompanied the king to Scotland in June. But the war was opposed by some, including Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, who knew his northern estates were vulnerable to attack. Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, and William Cecil, 2nd Earl of Salisbury, also urged the king to accept the Scots’ terms but he ignored their warnings. He ordered Pembroke to return to London to raise funds for a new war with Scotland.
Charles I’s court became notorious for self-indulgent behaviour but some took their antics too far. Robert Dormer, 1st Earl of Carnarvon, was addicted to gambling and hunting, while Christopher Villiers, 1st Earl of Anglesey, was banned from court because of his drunken behaviour. James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, ran up huge debts entertaining, spending all the money the king loaned to him.
Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, inherited large estates in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Derbyshire when he married Alatheia, daughter of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury. He acquired a taste for art while acting as an envoy around Europe and became known as the ‘Collector Earl’. He also invested in new buildings but his activities left him heavily in debt.
Charles I wanted uniformity between the churches on the Anglican model. He stirred up opposition when he imposed the Book of Common Prayer in Scotland but the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland abolished it in November 1638. Skirmishes along the border resulted in the Pacification of Berwick.
Charles also wanted a church government ruled by bishops in Scotland but another General Assembly abolished the bishops and declared itself free from royal control. After eleven years of ruling alone, Charles called parliament in April 1640 hoping to get its support. Instead parliament made several demands Charles would not agree to and he dissolved the Short Parliament.
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, organised a second invasion of Scotland but the Scots won the battle of Newburn on 28 August. Lieutenant General Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester, was captured but George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, saved the English artillery. The Scots then seized Northumberland and Durham and Francis Leigh, 1st Earl of Chichester, had to agree the peace under the Treaty of Ripon. Charles was forced to recall parliament in October 1640, to raise money to pay the Scottish expenses. This time the Long Parliament would sit for eight years and it would impeach Wentworth; he would eventually be executed. Charles had to accept what the General Assembly and the Scottish Parliament wanted in the autumn of 1641.
Thomas Wentworth had been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1632 and he set about reforming the administration. He planned to break the power of the Irish Catholic gentry by appointing juries to identify defective titles. They then set about confiscating land and raising extra customs duties but the money went to the crown instead of being spent in Ireland. Richard Burke, 1st Earl of St Albans, Governor of Connaught, opposed Wentworth’s actions and the arguments were said to have accelerated his death in 1635. Wentworth sarcastically retorted by saying he was not to blame for the death of a man over 60. Wentworth was recalled to England in September 1639 and was created Earl of Strafford.
Charles raised an army to fight the Scottish Covenanters but the House of Commons called for peace. Wentworth was given command of the English army but fell ill and Charles sued for peace under the Treaty of Berwick. In November 1640 the Long Parliament accused Strafford of ‘high misdemeanours’ in Ireland and imprisoned him in the Tower. His crime had been to tell the king that there was ‘an army in Ireland you may employ here to reduce this kingdom’; he argued that carrying out the king’s wishes was not a treasonable act.
The impeachment failed but Wentworth was attainted following the Army Plot in May 1641. General Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester, was imprisoned in the Tower and Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans, fled to France when the plot was discovered. William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne, was also involved but he remained loyal to the king because he believed the monarchy ‘was the foundation and support of his own greatness’.
Oliver St John, 1st Earl of Bolingbroke, made his ‘foxes and wolves’ speech in favour of the attainder. Meanwhile, George Digby opposed Strafford’s attainder and spoke out about the weakness of the evidence. But Digby was accused of stealing the prosecution notes and the House of Commons protested by having the hangman burn his speech. Colonel Lord Goring then warned the Master of Ordnance, Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl of Newport, of a Royalist plot to capture London, seize the Tower and rescue the king. Wentworth’s fate was sealed and Charles refused to support him because he dared not oppose parliament.
Wentworth’s sentence split opinion and Charles became angry when Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, encouraged a crowd to jeer at the condemned man. Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, had given evidence against Wentworth but he still helped his brother Henry try to rescue Wentworth from the Tower. Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, and William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, opposed Wentworth’s conviction while John Digby, 1st Earl of Bristol, and John Holles, 2nd Earl of Clare, were just two of those who tried to save his life. They all failed and Wentworth was eventually executed in January 1645.
Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset, was described as ‘beautiful, graceful and vigorous: his wit pleasant, sparkling, and sublime’. He used his charms to arrange the marriage of the Princess Mary to the Prince of Orange in 1642 and then accompanied her to the marriage.
The Long Parliament passed the Dissolution Act in May 1641. It formalised the king’s means to raise taxes, attacked the bishops and demanded that parliament would be summoned at least once every three years. Charles’s supporters countered the ‘wicked counsels’ of government by issuing the ‘Protestation’; they also had Wentworth arrested. There was an uneasy stand-off between the royalists and the parliamentarians in England but many, including John Robartes, 1st Earl of Radnor, were worried by Charles I’s determination to impose his religious policy and autocratic rule, believing he was being misled by wicked councillors. But it was the Irish Catholics who rebelled first because they were worried about an increase of Protestant rule.
Charles went to the House of Commons accompanied by troops at the beginning of January 1642, expecting to arrest five members for treason, including Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester. But Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, had warned them and they had already left when the soldiers entered the chamber. The Speaker, William Lenthall, told the king ‘I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.’ A few days later Charles left London with his family, fearing for their safety.
Different areas of the country declared their loyalties during the spring and summer and local grievances often decided which side they chose. Most urban areas wanted a balanced government and they favoured Parliament while most rural communities wanted a traditional government and supported the king. While there were views across the spectrum, virtually everyone wanted the king to stay on the throne. There were only small numbers of troops involved to begin with but some areas formed local militias to protect their communities from ill-disciplined soldiers.
Charles received an early setback when Sir John Hotham, the military governor of Kingston upon Hull, refused to hand over the cache of weapons used for the recent Scottish campaign. George Digby fled to the Dutch Republic after being ordered to appear in the Lords to answer a charge of high treason for an armed attempt to seize the port. Charles later moved to Nottingham and raised the royal standard on 22 August 1642. His next move was to march south-west, and en route he made the Wellington Declaration to uphold the ‘Protestant religion, the laws of England, and the liberty of Parliament’.
The nobility raised regiments under the ancient system called the Commission of Array. General Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester, had raised a regiment of horse for the king and he was wounded at the battle of Powick Bridge near Worcester on 23 September. It was the first major skirmish of the war.